Recording shows no movement

[cc_rider]

Well, I'm not sure what's going on. I have one of my IP cameras facing the water, and I watched a boat go by. I then closed Sighthound, and it saved the last video to my drive. I then loaded up the video and reviewed it. No action, no nothing. The time stamp is frozen at the time the video began recording, so I have essentially a 15 minute video of the same frame. Any comments?

[ryan]

I posted in reply to your previous post about frozen timestamps here: topic11499

Can you elaborate on what is occurring? Where are you trying to watch the video? It sounds like you may be trying to play clips outside of the app, and that perhaps your video player does not know how to play back h264 videos.

[cc_rider]

Hi Ryan,
The application creates MP4 files, which can easily be read by VLC. I have the latest version 2.14 installed, and I use it to watch all manner of videos on my system, from movies, tv series and music videos, different formats from mkv, avi, asf, mpeg, etc. I suspect something weird is happening, as VLC plays the video, but is locked on the first frame.

Judging by your response, there must be another way to view the videos. So I looked a little deeper into the application, and found the 'search' tab, which allowed me to find the source cam relevant to this issue. It seemed to play OK, as I noticed the timestamp counting seconds.

The follow-up questions I have are as follows:
1. Why can VLC not play these videos properly? This issue is only relevant to one of my webcams. The other, a USB Logitec 9000 does not have this issue. The mp4 files created by Sighthound are OK for this device when played back in VLC. This led me to believe that there is some other issue between Sighthound and the web cam.

2. Can the Sighthound developer add a camera called 'EC66 LYIPC CAM'? I used a competitor's software to, by trial and error(took hours, btw), go through the entire list of webcams, and found this one to behave in a similar manner to the Logitec 9000. However, this cam is not listed in Sighthound's list.

3. Why create output that is not usable using industry standard video players? I find this proprietary practice counter productive.(That's why I hate iTunes!!) One should not be forced into using embedded viewers/players when the user may(or may not) be more familiar with something else.

4. What is the meaning of the directory structure and its components? I see \archive\source_name\14051\1405135281-572949.mp4 How can this be simplified to \source_name\date_timestamp.mp4 ? In order to identify the date/time of a recording one is forced to use the date/time provided by the operating system. Again, a bit counter productive.

I'm leaning towards purchasing the Pro unlimited Cams version because I intend to use more than 2 cams once we get these issues sorted.

[scobo68]

Not a mod but I believe I do know what you are talking about in regards to #1 and 3.

The files are viewable with VLC player. Those files you are looking at that are 15 minutes long seem to be no movement, but for whatever reason are just constant recording without any rules applied. I don't know why it does it in 15 minute blocks that is for Ryan to answer. There is movement although very slight, even if only the sun moving, which you can see the shadows move if you scroll the VLC time bar. You see nothing at slow speed but will at fast speed. This is not the way meant for viewing videos for Sighthound, although was the means in other software like Ispy.

In Sighthound the search or "monitor view" under view are the same thing. They give you the means to watch anything that was captured per the rules set up, basically default is anything "moving" which is more specific than just the sun shadows, to selecting people, things within specific regions, etc...

I've used Ispy (don't know if that is the "other" you are talking about) before and you needed an outside form of viewing, which is why I preferred VitD which is now Sighthound. The viewer is incorporated into the software which makes it easier to view any hits your system picks up.

[cc_rider]

Hi Scobo68,

Nope, no movement. The time stamp stays the same throughout the entire clip. I checked a number of them. This is only systemic of mp4's created for the ip camera(www.sricctv.com) using Foscam FI8908W. The video files created for the USB Logitec 9000 Webcam play fine(there is motion and the timestamp increases by seconds).

The other software I'm evaluating is Security Monitor Pro. I'm leaning towards Sighhound because of the pricing structures involved. I am looking at user interface(usability), pricing as my main crietrea. I like the look and feel of Sighthound better. However, SMP has a more robust camera list. I am hoping that Sighthound developers can develop a script(or whatever they do in their camera list) for the EC66 LYIPC CAM. There seems to be something that goes awry with the FOSCAM option, even though it looks ok at first blush(in monitor mode). I have plenty of samples of mp4 files to send for examination. BTW, SMP had the same problem as Sighhound with creating MP4's using FOSCAM.

Thanks for the quick reply. It is much appreciated.
Regards,
Chris

[Semper Vaporo]

I don't understand why people are still asking these questions! Ryan and the principles of Sighthound have to be nice to the customer, but since I am a customer, I can be a bit more irate at you!

If you READ THE INSTRUCTIONS... or through these forums... You will see the answers to your conjectures and why you are so confused.

Sighthound records EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! The data is broken into 15 minute files so that you don't end up with one humongous file and so that if something goes awry, you only lose the last few minutes since the file is closed and saved every 15 minutes and a new one started.

Sighthound then has a database that marks the start and end of any part of the this set of files that has motion detected in it. If you are viewing the RAW VIDEO files OUTSIDE of Sighthound, then you are looking at video of the whole day in 15 minute segments. That is wasted effort!

If you select the 2nd tab from the left on the Sighthound window, above the main viewing video portion, the program will show you a list of the videos where motion was detected and you can view just that segment of the WHOLE DAY'S WORTH of video that has been recorded. You can limit the list to just one camera if you want and you can further limit the list of videos to just those where the motion fit a rule that you defined by selecting the rules in the dropdown list below the list of cameras, so you do not have to see all the video of cars on the street, but only those where someone has walked up to your front door (or a fly has landed on the lens!).

DON'T VIEW THE VIDEOS WITH SOME OTHER PROGRAM... THAT IS A WASTE OF TIME!

Use Sighthound to let it reduce the raw video data to just the segments that are relevant to the Rules that YOU set for Sighthound to follow. That is THE great function of the program!

Now, before you get your shorts in a knot about wasting disk space by saving EVERYTHING... The program will eventually delete the raw video that does not fit YOUR rules... it will only keep the raw video for 48 hours (the default time... or whatever you set it to in the "Tools" menu "Options" selection, dialog box). The data that fits YOUR rules will be saved as long as there is space for 48 hours of raw data and all the rule-saved video segments... then the oldest saved data will be deleted... but that should be several months later (depending on how much disk space YOU allocated and how many cameras you have and how much data is saved per the Rules YOU created).



Sorry, Ryan (and company) I just get tired of people bad-mouthing this software because they didn't read the instructions! (There is enough to complain about without picking on how it is supposed to work!)

[scobo68]

Not much one for personal attacks in a forum, but Semper Vaporo perhaps we are not the only ones that DON'T READ.

You are the one with your "shorts in a knot" about someone not reading and yet you missed what cc_rider said about it being one specific camera not recording video properly. We already covered the 15 minute blocks and thanks for clarifying that it does record all, but that isn't the problem as cc_rider said in his follow up, the one right before your diatribe.

So perhaps instead of "being tired of people bad mouthing the software" (please do highlight where that happened), try using your ever so vast expertise of all supporting information and help cc_rider solve his problem. After all that is what a good community does, help fellow users, isn't it? Hmm?

[ryan]

Thanks everyone for the input, I'll chime in as well, let me know if anything has been missed.

1. Why can VLC not play these videos properly?
3. Why create output that is not usable using industry standard video players? I find this proprietary practice counter productive.

As scobo68 pointed out, these should be playable in the media player of your choice, and we aren't doing anything proprietary.

We encode video in H.264, an industry standard, and save in mp4 containers, also an industry standard. I'm not smart enough or narcissistic enough to think that I could do a better job than the legions of people who came up with these. I honestly don't know why the videos are not playing back for you in VLC. I would guess that the proper codec hadn't been installed, but that would be odd. You mention that it is working with one camera but not another, which confuses the issue as we encode all videos the same way. That makes it sound like perhaps you are obtaining these videos from different software?

2. Can the Sighthound developer add a camera called 'EC66 LYIPC CAM'? I used a competitor's software to, by trial and error(took hours, btw), go through the entire list of webcams, and found this one to behave in a similar manner to the Logitec 9000. However, this cam is not listed in Sighthound's list.

If this is a webcam (as it sounds by the logitec comparison) it should show up in the camera list if you select "USB, builtin, or other webcam" from the camera type during configuration rather than "IP camera".

4. What is the meaning of the directory structure and its components? I see \archive\source_name\14051\1405135281-572949.mp4 How can this be simplified to \source_name\date_timestamp.mp4 ? In order to identify the date/time of a recording one is forced to use the date/time provided by the operating system. Again, a bit counter productive.

As Semper pointed out, this is somewhat intentionally non-human readible because users really shouldn't be manually interacting with these files and they should be considered internal data. There may be several "clips" within a single file, or a "clip" might span several files on disk. The files do not, and cannot, correspond directly to the event for a search, consider that you might have a rule for people loitering, and a rule for people crossing a boundary, both of which would create different 'clips', but use the same video. The Sighthound Video UI is optimized for searching through your video and quickly navigating between events, to do so through files, even if they were trimmed to match is much slower and a less pleasant experience. Also, as these files are managed by the application, trimmed to keep only the portions marked to be saved when the "temporarily keep all video for X hours" mark has passed, deleted as the disk space quota nears, etc... Viewing is theoretically ok, but moving/altering/renaming these files may lead to unexpected behavior in the app and/or data loss.

If you would like to export a clip for sharing or preservation, you can right click and export or choose "Tools->Export Clip...". If you would like to automatically export all clips matching a given rule for archival or backup purposes you might want to look at the FTP rule response or the local export response:
http://www.sighthound.com/support/rule-editor
http://www.sighthound.com/support/export-local-folder